As Steve McClaren pointed out on the eve of Saturday's infinitely dispiriting draw with Israel, this is the fourth qualification campaign in which he has been involved. On the other three occasions England, having worked themselves into a difficult position, scraped through. All the current evidence, from their own matches and those elsewhere in the group, suggests that this one may be the exception.
The difference, of course, is that McClaren is no longer the No2 on the bench but the undisputed leader. And now, having spent the last five matches compiling England's most barren run in more than a quarter of a century, he is looking ill-equipped to handle the task of ensuring that his team can face the immediate future with an optimism to match the gleaming promise of their new home at Wembley.
After Israel had failed to land the blows that would have brought a deserved profit for their spirited first half on Saturday night, the game was there for McClaren to win. A few tweaks at half-time should have provided the ammunition for England to dispatch opponents showing the signs of mental exhaustion. Instead there was only more of the same as England continued to fire blanks.
As John Terry intimated in his pre-match interview, the talented individuals within the England squad seem to lack the ability to break a stalemate by seizing the initiative. Not only does this demonstrate how England miss the imagination and unpredictability of the injured Joe Cole even more than Chelsea but it exposes the particular gulf between club and international football.
Take Frank Lampard, who had yet another match on Saturday in which his international limitations were exposed. At Stamford Bridge he benefits from the subtle and intelligent instruction of Jose Mourinho, who drills his players in the arts of transition between defence and attack and vice versa. Under their club coach Lampard and his colleagues are in no doubt about their roles, both in the greater scheme and in any individual phase of play. Merely through a shortage of available time with the players, such intensive preparations are beyond the ambitions of an international coach, meaning that something else is required from both coach and players.
At this level each player needs to have the authority and confidence to take responsibility for himself. He is there, in theory, because of his superior command of the game, and his minimum responsibility is to live up to his selection. That is the extra dimension of the international game and you could see it in Israel's performance in the opening 45 minutes against England, when such moderately gifted footballers as the midfielders Walid Badier and Amit Ben Shushan and the left-back Yoav Ziv made every ounce of their talent count and surpassed themselves as a result.
England's players usually do the opposite. So cosseted and fawned upon in the Premiership, they continue to be fooled by their reputations into believing that their mere presence together on the park will be enough to ensure victory. So although they try hard - and no one could ever accuse them, particularly the unhappy Lampard, of lack of effort - they consistently fail to make the most of what they bring to the game.
Terry said beforehand that there could be no excuses for a poor result against Israel and he was right. Dror Kashtan's team was there to be taken apart after half-time. McClaren tried to find consolation in the number of times his players got the ball into the box but coolness and invention were sadly lacking in the final 20 yards.
It was amazing that the coach failed to switch Aaron Lennon, England's only real threat in the opening period, over to the right side in the second half, moving Steven Gerrard into the middle and pushing Lampard to the left or replacing him with Stewart Downing. So well equipped is Lennon to undermine even a defence as resolute as Israel's that he should have been encouraged to attack from every angle in the belief that sooner or later he would make the decisive opening, perhaps even from a position behind the strikers, where he could link with a becalmed and frustrated Wayne Rooney. Instead McClaren persisted with a formation that was clearly failing to provide the necessary penetration.
A dozen goals against Andorra in Barcelona on Wednesday would buy the head coach a brief respite from increasingly hostile criticism without beginning to provide the answers England need. As he left the pitch on Saturday with the sound of jeering in his ears and his assistant, Terry Venables, trailing furtively in his distant wake, there was nothing to suggest that England are heading for anything other than their biggest disaster since the failure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup finals.
The way things are going, in fact, England's progress to Euro 2008 will require a great deal more than the late free-kick with which David Beckham sent England to Japan in 2002 or the goalless draw in Istanbul that secured their passage to Portugal in 2004. The qualifying campaign for last summer's World Cup finals may not have been a cakewalk but a narrow victory over Austria at least ensured their presence in Germany with a fixture to spare. This time the crisis may already be out of their hands.
